V. I. Lenin

Purging the Party[1]

Written:20 September, 1921First Published:PravdaNo. 210, September 21, 1921; Signed:N. Lenin; Published according to thePravdatextSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 2nd English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 33, pages 39-41Translated:David Skvirsky and George HannaTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

The purging of the Party has obviously developed into a serious
      and vastly important affair.

In some places the Party is being purged mainly with the aid of
      the experience and suggestions of non-Party workers; these
      suggestions and the representatives of the non-Party proletarian
      masses are being heeded with due consideration. That is the most
      valuable and most important thing. If we really succeed in
      purging our Party from top to bottom in this way, without
      exceptions, it will indeed be an enormous achievement for the
      revolution.

The achievements of the revolution cannot now be the same as
      they were previously. Their nature inevitably changes in
      conformity with the transition from the war front to the
      economic front, the transition to the New Economic Policy, the
      conditions that primarily demand higher productivity of labour,
      greater labour discipline. At such a time improvements at home
      are the major achievements of the revolution; a neither salient,
      striking, nor immediately perceptible improvement in labour, in
      its organisation and results; an improvement from the viewpoint
      of the fight against the influence of the petty-bourgeois and
      petty-bourgeois-anarchist element, which corrupts both the
      proletariat and the Party. To achieve such an improvement, the
      Party must be purged of those who have lost touch with the
      masses (let alone, of course, those who discredit the Party in
      the eyes of the masses). Naturally. we shall not submit to
      everything the masses say, because the masses, too,
      sometimes—particularly in time of exceptional weariness
      and exhaustion resulting from excessive hardship and
      suffering—yield to sentiments that are in no way
      advanced. But in appraising persons, in the negative attitude to
      those who have “attached” themselves to us for
      selfish motives, to those who have become “puffed-up
      commissars” and “bureaucrats”, the suggestions
      of the non-Party proletarian masses and, in many cases, of the
      non-Party peasant masses, are extremely valuable. The working
      masses have a fine intuition, which enables them to distinguish
      honest and devoted Communists from those who arouse the disgust
      of people earning their bread by the sweat of their brow,
      enjoying no privileges and having no “pull”.

To purge the Party it is very important to take the suggestions
      of the non-Party working people into consideration. It will
      produce big results. It will make the Party a much stronger
      vanguard of the class than it was before; it will make it a
      vanguard that is more strongly bound up with the class, more
      capable of leading it to victory amidst a mass of difficulties
      and dangers.

As one of the specific objects of the Party purge, I would point
      to the combing out of ex-Mensheviks. In my opinion, of the
      Mensheviks who joined the Party after the beginning of 1918, not
      more than a hundredth part should be allowed to remain; and even
      then, every one of those who are allowed to remain must be
      tested over and over again. Why? Because, as a trend, the
      Mensheviks have displayed in 1918-21 the two qualities that
      characterise them: first, the ability skilfully to adapt, to
      ”attach” themselves to the prevailing trend among
      the workers; and second, the ability even more skilfully to
      serve the whiteguards heart and soul, to serve them in action,
      while dissociating themselves from them in words. Both these
      qualities are the logical outcome of the whole history of
      Menshevism. It is sufficient to recall Axelrod’s proposal
      for a “labour congress”,[2]the attitude of the
      Mensheviks towards the Cadets[3](and to the
      monarchy) in words and action, etc., etc. The Mensheviks
      ”attach” themselves to the Russian Communist Party
      not only and even not so much because they are Machiavellian
      (although ever since 1903 they have shown that they are past
      masters in the art of bourgeois diplomacy), but because they are
      so ”adaptable". Every opportunist is distinguished for his
      adaptability (but not all adaptability is opportunism); and the
      Mensheviks, as opportunists, adapt themselves ”on
      principle” so to speak, to the prevailing trend among the
      workers and assume a protective colouring, just as a
      hare’s coat turns white in winter. This characteristic of
      the Mensheviks must be kept in mind and taken into account. And
      taking it into account means purging the Party of approximately
      ninety-nine out of every hundred Mensheviks who joined the
      Russian Communist Party after 1918, i.e., when the victory of
      the Bolsheviks first became probable and then certain.

The Party must be purged of rascals, of bureaucratic, dishonest
      or wavering Communists, and of Mensheviks who have repainted
      their “facade” but who have remained Mensheviks at
      heart.

September 20, 1921

[1]The purge was
      undertaken in the second half of 1921 on the basis of the Tenth
      R.C.P.(B.) Congress resolution “On Problems of Party
      Development”. It was preceded by long and careful
      preparation.

Under the purge nearly 170,000 people, i.e., almost 25 per cent
      of the membership, were expelled from the Party. This improved
      the Party’s social composition, strengthened discipline,
      gave the Party greater prestige among the non-Party worker and
      peasant masses and freed the Party from elements who discredited
      it. The Party’s ideological and organisational unity was
      enhanced.

[2]The idea of
      convening a so-called labour congress, proposed by P. B. Axelrod
      and supported by other Mensheviks, was aimed at getting
      representatives of various workers’ organisations together
      and founding a legal ”broad labour party", which would
      include Social-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries and
      anarchists. Actually, it would have meant the dissolution of the
      R.S.D.L.P. and its replacement by a non-Party organisation.

[3]Cadets—members of the Constitutional-Democratic
      Party, the chief political organisation of the
      liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie in Russia. It was founded in
      October 1905, its membership including representatives of the
      bourgeoisie, Zemstvo leaders from among the landowners, and
      bourgeois intellectuals. In order to deceive the working people
      the Cadets falsely called themselves the “Party of
      People’s Freedom”, but in reality they never went
      beyond the demand for a constitutional monarchy. They considered
      their main task to be the fight against the revolutionary
      movement and aspired to share power with the tsar and the feudal
      landowners. During the First World War they actively supported
      the tsarist government’s foreign policy of conquest, and
      in the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of February
      1917 they tried to save the monarchy. After the Great October
      Socialist Revolution they became irreconcilable enemies of
      Soviet rule and actively participated in all the armed
      counter-revolutionary actions and campaigns of the
      interventionists. When the interventionists and whiteguards were
      defeated, the Cadets fled abroad, where they continued their
      anti-Soviet, counter-revolutionary activity.